


Role Reversal

by SegaBarrett



Category: Hell on Wheels (TV)
Genre: BDSM, M/M, Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:57:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen offers Elam an opportunity to change history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Role Reversal

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Hell on Wheels, and I make no money from this. 
> 
> A/N: Written for kink bingo square, "historical roleplay". Spoilers for the Season 2 finale and sort of the Season 3 premiere.

To Cullen Bohannon, sometimes it was like Elam was the only other person left in the world. After Lily Bell, the second woman he had allowed himself some kind of permission to love, had been taken from him just as brutally as his first, he had escaped into the wilderness, and he had wanted to die.

Now he was back, and he was in charge, but the whole job and the task at hand were meaningless in comparison to the two people he was doing that task for. The first was Lily; the railroad had been her dream, after all. 

Then there was Elam. Frustrating Elam, the one he couldn’t figure out. He had stopped trying, maybe he had stopped trying. The other man was so damned stubborn that you couldn’t try and tell him anything, all he would tell you was that he was a free man.

Cullen supposed that as a free man, he was also entitled to act like a complete idiot when he wanted to. Recently he had been, though at this point it was so far after the fact that Cullen didn’t even remember what either of them was annoyed about, just that something had to be settled between them.

They were behind closed doors, locked doors in a boarding house they were staying at while Cullen settled some railroad business. Durant was trying to make his move again, and only Cullen could lead him off, with the same bravado that he tended to put on when he didn’t know what else to do. The business would proceed in the morning but for now, drinking and sleeping seemed to be in order. They’d only gotten through the drinking so far, however, and Elam had annoyed Cullen by taking the last swig of whiskey from the canteen.

“You know, Elam,” he snarled, “You take a hell of a lot of liberties sometimes. A gentleman doesn’t finish off the last of the whiskey without at least offerin’ some up to his fellow man.”

Elam looked at him and glared before rolling his eyes.

“What you mean to say is, a man like me shouldn’t be taking something without offerin’ it up to the white man out of politeness.”

Cullen threw up his hands.

“It’s all about color with you, ain’t it Elam? How many times do I have to tell you…”

Elam rose off of the bed and rounded on him. 

“My whole damn life it’s been about color! Not that you can understand, Bohannon,” he spat the name. “Everything was always handed to you, just cause you came out right… or should I say, came out white. Me, I got labeled in one damn category and that’s what’s led me to your irritating white ass!”

Cullen’s glare dropped and his lip curled into a smirk.

“So you’re saying if things were flipped… if things were flipped then you’d… what, act exactly as I do? Or do everything better? You want a hand in it, then fine take it, because dammit Elam… my life isn’t anything to yearn after!”

“I’d take it, though.”

“Then take it.”

Elam stared at him. 

“What do you mean?”

“For an hour.” Cullen didn’t even know what he was saying; he was just letting the words tumble out of his mouth. “I’ll be the slave, you be the master.”

Elam ogled at him.

“What kind of weird shit you into, Bohannon? If you want to get with me, then just say it.”

“And here I thought I’d been making it obvious,” Cullen drawled. “But let’s do it.” Cullen pulled off his belt in one fell swoop and handed it to Elam. “This should stand in for a whip. Don’t have any real ones lying around. Sorry if you’re disappointed.”

Elam glared at him.

“The hell are you playing at, Bohannon?”

“I’m not playing at anything. You want your chance to be in charge, then take it. Whip my ass, Elam. I know you want to.”

Elam’s eyes flared with fury. Cullen couldn’t tell whether he was taking him seriously or not, but obviously the idea was getting some traction, was going through his mind at the speed of a locomotive.

He glared at Cullen and hissed, low in his throat, “That’s Master Elam to you.”

“That’s right.”

Elam reeled back and slapped him.

“Don’t talk back to me. Get down there. Thought I told you to get down!”

Cullen blinked. Maybe his friend was taking to this a little more quickly than Cullen had been intending, but he’d be lying if he didn’t find something appealing in the idea too. The ability to slide into a role he’d never had, to drop off all the responsibility and all the bullshit. If it had been real, the way it had been real for Elam, he wouldn’t have wanted it at all.  


But it was pretend. A thing in history that had happened, but was gone now and with it, all the shit that Cullen had had to fight for. The war had taken it all and hell if giving Elam power wasn’t a hundred times better than handing it off to Durant or those Yankees or most of all that son of a bitch The Swede. 

He didn’t have much time to ruminate on it past that, though, because Elam hit him hard in the ass with the belt.

“Don’t you listen?” he raged, and Cullen began to wish they’d done this somewhere a little more deserted.

“Yes, Master Elam,” Cullen shot back, trying for deferential but coming off more sarcastic, which earned him another blow.

“You need to respect me… boy,” Elam snarled. “You don’t need to stand there and act like you can disrespect me. And look at me when I’m talkin’ to you.” Cullen didn’t need to be told twice, and suddenly whatever thoughts he’d had of this being freeing were beginning to fly utterly out the window. Giving an angry man a whip, even without it being a real one, was probably a bad idea.  


The blows began to hit with barely any space between them, despite the fact that Cullen was listening to Elam’s instructions. Cullen grunted deep in his throat and tried to take it a while before he spoke up after a particularly brutal one nailed him right in the ass crack.

“Elam… Elam wait! Elam stop!”

“You don’t get to tell me…”

Cullen rose and turned around, but Elam was still moving his arm and Cullen got the belt directly in his face. He made a low yelp of pain and rose his hands to it, and only then did Elam drop the belt.

“You couldn’t ever know. You couldn’t ever know what it’s like. Playin’ at it isn’t gonna change jack shit, Bohannon.”

Cullen looked at him. 

“You won’t ever know what it’s like to be me either,” he told him quietly. “I pray to God you don’t.” He thought of Eva and the baby, still back on Hell on Wheels, and hoped that they’d be safe, that Elam wouldn’t return to find them as dead as Mary and his son. “Let’s go to bed, Elam. We’ll go home in the morning.”

Elam looked about ready to protest, to struggle for domination again, but that must have been what he wanted to, for he kicked the belt further away and pulled back the covers.  


It was a long night and neither of them slept.


End file.
